CANADA: Toronto, ON - HDTV - Page 39

Anything doing with CIII (41.1)?? Reception has been down in the AM the past few days with most other stations good as usual.

Another CJMT/Omni2 update - the RF 51 transmitter will be shut down Tuesday Sept. 4

CKVP-DT from Fonthill (just west of Niagara Falls) is now up (maybe just testing at this point) on channel 42.

Testing for the past couple of days, only during the day. Distance is less than 1/2 of what it is from the CN tower (around 25 miles).

Signal into the city of Buffalo is as strong as CBLT & CBLFT making it the one of the three strongest of of Ontario.

CHCJ (CTV Two) in Hamilton (35.1, RF 35) is also officially up as of Thursday Sept. 13 when the CRTC approval was published. Apparently Bell feels they are above the law and started broadcasting 9 days earlier. They did wait for the CRTC approval before putting the station id and program guide data in its PSIP..

This is by far the weakest of any Toronto /Hamilton stations. In Etobicoke I pretty much need to aim my UHF antenna right at it to receive it which means my Toronto/Buffalo stations disappear. The transmitter is on a microwave tower above a Bell building on Upper Wentworth and Fennell (ie. not very high off the ground like the rest of the Toronto /Hamilton stations).

After a lengthy absence, CBLFT program guide data is back and it appears to be stable on CBLT as well now. But be warned a few tuners (particularly CECBs) have difficulty picking it up (pretty sure this is a bug in the tuner firmware)

a) CBC uses CVCT in its PSIP (not sure why but it is legal PSIP) - the Zenith DTT901 appears to be tripped up by this
b) CBC has EIT/ETT block cycle through PIDs rather than a static mapping (again legal PSIP) - the RCA dta800 appears to be tripped up by this when EIT-0/ETT-) aren;t on the lowest PIS (I realize this is probably too technical for those not familiar with the ATSC PSIP specification ) WUTV FOX 29 Buffalo also does it this way but has a much smaller cycle so it's less apparent there.

Using a ePVision Tuner/DVR as the source with it's flaky operation, here are the time spans (with the last time listed shown) of the stations receivable (without turning my antenna for the three WNY that weren't listed). The samplings were taken at 10 AM this date;

WIVB - 130am next day
CBLT - 1000pm next day
WKBW - 730pm next day
CFTO - 700pm
CHCH - 700pm
WNED - 1000am next day
CICA - 800am four days (listings & times are corrupted, see attachment)
WNLO - 130am next day
CBLFT - 1030am next day
WUTV - 100pm next day
CJMT - 700am next day
CIII - 1030pm
CKVP - 1000pm
CFMT - 730am next day
WBBZ - 4 blank entries
(CITY is rarely receivable here due to interference from WNED.)

Whats' the deal with CICA (TVO)???

It appears CFTO has stopped providing TVGOS data listing from Rovi (or the Canadian equivalent) as of last Wednesday (the 13th.
Anyone confirm or deny this?

I can confirm that on my (6-year old) Toshiba, I had no data on Saturday, Feb 23, 2013. However, since I would typically have had a week or so of advance data, that would mean that the last data update was at least as far back as Feb 16th. So it looks like the OTA TV guide might be gone...

I still have data on my (newer) Sony, however, which is able to get listings from the internet (not just OTA). So if your TV happens to be internet-capable, you could try changing its settings to get the TV guide from an online source. If not, it might be time to hook up an internet-capable device to your TV, so at least you can check out the listings on Zap2it.com

I live just North of Toronto, by the way, and had been getting TVGOS data from CFTO with no problem for years. I had also heard recently that Rovi would be phasing out the OTA data over several months...looks like they got to CFTO.
Edited by fbruce - 2/24/13 at 12:07am

Anyone have any information regarding Orangeville Ontario? How's the reception? Anything work in this area?